Apple's Wide Angle

Apple's new desktop boasts what the company is saying is "the largest flat-panel display ever offered in an all-in-one desktop."

Apple Computer Corp. finished 2003 with a bang, innovating on both the notebook and desktop fronts. The company has introduced a new iMac system with a 20-inch display (see the photo), which it is billing as "the largest flat-panel display ever offered in an all-in one desktop." In addition, Apple introduced a new dual-processor 1.8-GHz Power Mac G5 desktop and lowered the price on its single processor 1.6-GHz Power Mac G5 system.

The new 20-inch iMac has a display that offers up to 1,680- by 1,050-pixel resolution, and the company claims the system has significantly more actual screen real estate than the 15-inch iMac, so that users can view more than two full pages on-screen side-by-side. It comes with Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. A 1.25-GHz PowerPC G4 model with 256MB of DDR SDRAM costs $2,199.

Apple's goal in using such a large screen in an iMac is to "raise the bar on what customers can expect from an all-in-one desktop," says Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing. It seems unlikely, though, that iMac displays can get much larger than 20 inches within the all-in-one form factoreven as standalone flat-panels get bigger and bigger.

The company's new dual-processor 1.8-GHz Power Mac G5 system starts at $2,499, and the single processor 1.6-GHz model's price has been lowered to $1,799.

Both the 20-inch iMac and the new Power Mac G5 systems are slated for reviews in an upcoming issue.

Sebastian Rupley is Editorial Director for PCMagCast, PC Magazine's channel for live Web seminars and online events on tech topics for consumers and small businesses. Previously, he was West Coast Editor of PC Magazine for over a decade, where he oversaw news and feature stories for the publication, and represented the brand on panels and at conferences on the West Coast. He also served as Features Editor of PC/Computing magazine, managing and promoting many noted technology journalists.
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